What I've Learned: Mikhail Gorbachev

Leader, 77, Moscow.

I was just a boy. My father was going off to fight in World War II. We were all saying goodbye to him. It was very emotional. Everyone was crying. Just before he left, my father bought me some ice cream. It came in an aluminum cup. I can still remember that ice cream.

We will have peace for all, or we will have no peace at all.

Trust is when there is no place for lying.

The politicians in America sometimes act in a way that seems disrespectful toward our country and our people. The Russians are people who value their dignity. You better not mess with that.

You have to consider that Reagan was twenty years older than I was. He was the age of my mother. So there was a generation gap. During one of our talks, he tried to lecture me and moralize. I said to him, "Mr. President, you are not my teacher, and I am not your student. You are not a prosecutor, and I am not a defendant. So let's not subject each other to lectures. Let's talk frankly and address the issues. If you want to lecture, we might as well wrap it up, because there's really nothing to talk about." He got a little upset. Not long after that, he said, "Why don't we go on a first-name basis? You call me Ron and I'll call you Mikhail." That was an important step.

You know, many urban people have the impression that muffins grow on supermarket shelves. Homemade bread is best.

Without the foundation of the family, it's very hard to be a good human being.

I grew up in the hinterlands. I never saw bananas when I was a young man. I never saw a pineapple.

When I was about fifteen years old, some frontline soldiers gave me a glass with liquid in it, but they didn't tell me that it was vodka. I didn't know anything about alcohol at the time. I gulped it down, and these guys had a good time watching my baptism by fire. After that I became a lot more cautious as regards alcohol. To this day, I'm not a big drinker.

The day after I announced that I was stepping down, I was scheduled to come to the Kremlin for an interview with a Japanese reporter. I got a call beforehand from one of my assistants, who said that Yeltsin was in my office with his entourage, finishing off a bottle of whiskey. These people were almost like savages, celebrating their big victory over a bottle in my office. I told myself: That office has been desecrated. I will never set foot in that room again.

That Louis Vuitton ad? The proceeds go to Green Cross International and its American counterpart, Global Green. Also, I travel a lot, and a good bag comes in handy.

We are halfway toward a democratic transition. When Putin became president, the country was in chaos. People were struggling to survive, just to live, and the West was ignoring it. The West liked Yeltsin, so the Russian people were thinking, Why in this time of trouble is the West supporting Yeltsin? It was very frustrating. You need to understand that Putin rescued the country from chaos.

Have patience. Like I say to my American friends, it took you more than two hundred years to get where you want us to get in two hundred days.

A rural person feels a connection to the environment not just on a daily basis, but hourly.

The members of the nuclear club are not setting a good example for other countries. They insist that other countries cannot develop nuclear weapons, while at the same time they strive to perfect their own.

Look at what happened in New Orleans. Look at how big the blow was and how difficult the consequences are in dealing with such a blow. Imagine what would happen in a situation where nuclear weapons were used. Imagine the effect of the radiation. It's been years since the Chernobyl accident, and there are towns and villages where people do not live. The towns are still there. They haven't been torn down, but not a single person lives there. So this is a very serious matter -- more than serious.

Nuclear weapons need to be abolished.